I can feel the fever setting in, but, because I’m broken inside, I’m currently baking bread pudding with my left-over panettone (from Christmas Day), and I’m prepping a carrot soup because I don’t feel like cooking
. So obviously I’m not entirely all right. But I’m a lot better than I’ve been lately.
A few months ago, we were victim to a burglary. The second one in two months. It was in our storage booth, but it feels invasive no matter how you slice it, and we did lose some important things. As I went to inform my neighbours of the burglary, I spotted some of our stolen items in someone else’s storage unit. It made a lot of sense. The thieves had had the key to the basement (where the main storage booths are), both times, and they knew where to look. The police had no advice other than to provide harder evidence – which is difficult – and I went to bed shaking and crying. At about this time, my upstairs neighbours also ended up getting into noisier and noisier habits, involving sawing, drilling, hammering, vacuuming and partying at any time of day. And I do mean any time. Almost every night I would wake up to a new exciting loud noise above my bed.
A few days after the burglary, I also learned that whoever did this must have found a document with personal information on it, and had promptly used that to try and take out a bunch of loans in my name. None of these went through (as I obviously didn’t actually sign for them), but it was stressful and a dumb waste of time. The apartment we’d lived in for three years started feeling unsafe. Two burglaries in two months is a lot. Identity theft is a pain in the ass. Sleep reduction topped it all off. We were looking to move out.
For the past week, we’ve been turning our new apartment into our new home. But I’ll be honest: the first night that I slept in the new place, it was already my home. I’ve slept a lot this Christmas. I’ve been trying to sleep off three months of sustained anxiety and fear. I’m still adjusting, writing this from a kitchen that is only half moved-into, but at least it smells amazing. And if I do get this fever I’m feeling, it’ll be my only problem. It sounds absurd, but I’ve really looked forward to having only one problem.